


Running In Circles

by shinealightonme



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Bad Matchmaking, Bisexuality, F/F, Humor, Single Parents, wingman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-07-14
Packaged: 2019-06-10 06:12:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15285423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinealightonme/pseuds/shinealightonme
Summary: "I'm thinking about dating again," Gina says, in what is clearly the sad and thoughtful voice she had practiced for this occasion."Uh-huh."





	Running In Circles

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mlraven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mlraven/gifts).



> mlraven wanted Rosa and Gina being brotp or wingpeople or in a relationship, and my brain read that and went "(d) all of the above." I hope you enjoy!

Gina collapses onto Rosa's desk with a loud, dramatic sigh.

Rosa doesn't so much as twitch an eyelash.

Gina sighs again, longer, and collapses more thoroughly, half sprawled out along the desk.

Rosa refuses to reward her behavior with attention.

Gina sighs a third time -- in a way that sounds more like a raptor screeching as it dives toward its prey than anything else -- and collapses more thoroughly still, until she sprawls off of the desk and onto Rosa's lap.

Rosa hits _save_ on her report and keeps typing. "What."

"I'm thinking about dating again," Gina says, in what is clearly the sad and thoughtful voice she had practiced for this occasion.

"Uh-huh.

"Yeah. It's been a while since I broke up with the father of my child."

"Uh-huh."

"And I want Iggy to have two parents."

"She has two parents. Milton didn't _die_."

"Great!" Gina bolts up, fake moroseness discarded. "So you'll come with me!"

That wasn't anything close to what Rosa had said, but arguing about the details of something Gina didn't want to hear, or even the thesis, or even what language she was speaking, was not a productive use of time. "Come with you where?"

"Out to a bar. Tonight."

Rosa had thought she had a pretty good idea of Iggy's custody schedule. It would be hard not to when Gina used "I have my kid today!" as an excuse to come into work late, and also used "My kid is at her father's today and I'm devastated by her absence!" as an equally valid excuse to come into work late. "Iggy's at her dad's?"

"No, Jake and Amy are going to look after her."

Amy, who happened to be walking by reading a file, looks up. "Oh, Gina, we can't -- on such short notice -- I mean, we _love_ to babysit, but -- "

"Great! See? Jake and Amy are going to babysit."

"Well, we _would_ ," Amy protests feebly, "but we have tickets tonight -- "

" _G-r-e-a-t,_ see, _Jake_ and _Amy_ are going to _ba-by-sit,_ " Gina says again, loudly.

"Fine." Amy sighs -- a much more convincing sound and thoroughly genuine -- and pulls out her phone. She opens an app for something that Rosa can just make out is a ticketing website.

"So you have to come out," Gina continues. "I'll be fabulous, and you'll wingwoman me, it'll be great."

"No. It'll suck."

"Great!" Rosa decides to just accept this _great_ instead of waiting for Gina to increase her volume. She's still half sitting on Rosa's lap; if Rosa's going to lose her hearing it's going to be from diving out of an exploding building just ahead of a fireball and diving straight into freezing cold ocean water, not from getting exploited by a coworker. "I'll pick you up at eight in something slutty."

"I'm not going to wear something slutty to a bar with you."

"Oh, no, I'll be wearing something slutty, don't pull focus, mmmmmmkay? Tonight's about me. T-H-X, Ro-Ro," and Rosa grits her teeth as Gina floats off to the break room to eat Scully's two p.m. dessert.

-

By 'pick you up at eight' Gina apparently meant 'send you a text at 7:58 demanding you come to my apartment with Advil and a box of band-aids,' which works just fine for Rosa. This way she doesn't have to tell Gina where she lives, and she already has bandages and Advil in her car.

"What am I supposed to do with this?" Gina asks, holding up Rosa's perfectly acceptable bandage in front of her with a look of disgusted confusion. "I'm trying to save my heels from blisters, not start a quilting bee."

"It's medical gauze," Rosa says.

"It's a tent for the most tragically boring circus of all time."

Rosa can see where Gina thinks the bandage is too big, given that it's nearly as much fabric as Gina's entire outfit.

"You're supposed to cut it down to the size you need and then stick it on with medical tape."

"Oh, perfect." Gina snatches the medical tape out of Rosa's grasp and puts her other hand on her shoulder. She leans on Rosa and steps out of one high heel, ripping a piece of medical tape off with her teeth.

"What -- "

"Sh-sh-sh, just be the amazing strong perfect beautiful woman I know you are and let me lean on you in my time of need." Gina pops her foot up and sticks the tape on the back of her heel.

"What are you doing."

"These shoes pinch."

"Wear other shoes."

Gina sighs -- not a 'pretending to be sad to get something I want from you' sigh, but a 'genuinely think that I am enough better than you that I can feel sad for you' sigh. "Oh, Rosa. Have you _seen_ my calves tonight?"

"I have seen virtually every inch of your skin tonight."

"Well then, you're welcome." Gina steps back into her shoe and Rosa starts to move -- but not fast enough, because Gina leans on her again and pops her other foot out of its shoe.

"Seriously, how can you wear those? What if you need to run away? Or fight someone? Or scale a wall?"

"Okay, in reverse order because that is the descending order of madness. Option A, that's what you're here for. Option B, that's what you're here for. Option C, I'd kick them off and then boom! All the running you could ever want."

"You'd run barefoot down a sidewalk. A Brooklyn sidewalk."

Gina's face freezes in a parody of her _I'm right about everything_ face, which slowly melts off to reveal an expression of horror.

This would be when any normal person admitted they were wrong and went up to change their shoes.

Of course, Rosa isn't talking to a normal person: she's talking to Gina.

With a little jolt like a horse being startled awake or an unpleasant Academy classmate being struck with an electric current, Gina shivers all over and stands straight back up, former cocky look back on her face.

"Option C, that's what you're here for. You'd pick me up and carry me away."

Rosa snorts. "I take it we're not walking to the bar if you're in those shoes."

"No, that's what you're here for!"

"I'm not carrying you to a bar."

"As alluring as that mental image is, I did mean your car."

Gina really does have a gift for making something you didn't want to do in the first place seem like a good idea, just by introducing the possibility of something much worse. Even _knowing_ that that's what Gina does doesn't dilute the effect. Rosa unlocks her car and settles for being grateful that Gina isn't an autocratic despot. Or, well, that her territory only encompasses one Brooklyn police precinct and a bunch of sleep deprived weirdos online and not, say, a mid-sized European country.

She lets Gina give the directions, since Rosa doesn't where they're going, and since Gina was going to do it anyway.

And then they arrive at the bar and Rosa wishes for only the third time in her life that she'd asked for more details about another human's personal crisis, and damn Gina for setting yet another record in her books.

"The Pocket?" Rosa asks, flat.

"Yeah, c'mon."

"Gina."

"Rosa."

"This is a lesbian bar."

"That is how it is commonly referred to, but the reviews make it very clear that they are open to all varieties of women who enjoy women."

" _Gina._ "

"I am so over men," Gina says. "You don't even know."

"I know that I don't want to watch a straight girl lead on a bunch of women because she thinks it'll be fun."

"Rosa!" Gina's mouth goes wide and her eyes go narrow, her patented 'I am making a point about being offended' face. "Do you really think I'd toy with someone's emotions like that?"

"I once saw you break up with a guy by telling him that you were dying."

"Okay, yeah, I have pulled the Walk To Remember a few times. A few dozen times," Gina interrupts herself. "But that doesn't mean I'm playing tourist in your orientation. You're not the only one who gets to be fabulously bisexual. Consider this my rite of initiation."

"There is no rite of bisexual initiation."

"Not with that attitude there's not."

Rosa crosses her arms, which she can do, since she's wearing actual _human clothes_ that allow for a _range of motion_ beyond making duck lips and asking someone to pass you a drink.

The theatrics slide off of Gina, until Rosa's left with something that she can't quite explain, except that it makes her uncomfortable to see.

"Look," Gina says, an octave lower and half the decibels. "Guys have always liked me, and women never have. Any time I've ever tried to explore this part of myself, it's like -- I'm too loud and too rude and too _me_. So if you were constantly striking out with women and at the same time getting tons of attention -- I mean, _tons_ of attention. I mean you're just drowning in it -- "

"I get the picture," Rosa says.

" -- just, soaking in attention, like a towel that gets dropped in a Jacuzzi filled with champagne -- "

"I get it, move on."

" -- wouldn't you stick with what was easy and worked and made you feel good about yourself instead of crappy?"

Rosa shifts, resettles her arms. "So what changed?"

Gina doesn't answer right away, which is the most surprising thing about the night, even more surprising than looking up and seeing the surprisingly tasteful decor of The Pocket and realizing where they were.

"I guess I started thinking about Iggy," Gina says. "How I'd want her to be able to be herself no matter who she was with, and how I should be a good example for her of integrity. Also how if someone she went on a date with made her feel bad I _would_ tase them and keep them in a torture dungeon hidden under the laundry room of my condo building."

"You remember that I'm a cop."

"I do, in this scenario I'm using your taser."

"You don't get to use my taser."

"Fine." Gina flaps a hand, annoyed at having to deal with trivialities like _the law_ or _the value of other human lives._ "I'll use your mace."

"No."

"Your knife?"

"No."

"Please?" Gina wheedles. "Just one of the little ones, you can keep Stabby for yourself."

"I don't have names for my knives."

"That you admit."

Rosa sighs. Damn, this dramatic shit is contagious. "Fine. We can go in. But tomorrow morning I am getting the blueprints for your building from your HOA and looking for your hidden torture dungeon."

"Ah, Rosa, that's so cute that you think you could find it."

"Inside. Now."

-

"Ooh!" Gina flaps a hand toward the corner of the bar like she's never heard of the concept of subtlety. Which, given that it's Gina, she probably hasn't; probably when someone tried to explain it to her she tuned them out because she had also never heard of the concept of constructive criticism. She does, at least, have the sense to put her hand on the straw of her necrotically pink cocktail and take a long sip when the woman she had been very obviously gesturing at turns to look for what that noise was. "What about her? Rosa, go make her like me."

"That is not what it means to wingman."

"Uh-huh, sure, go win her heart for me, I believe in youuuuuu," and with a sing-song flourish Gina pushes Rosa forward and then follows behind her.

"Hello." Rosa focuses her attention on the woman that had caught Gina's eye. Thirties, five-seven, Latina. She didn't look like anything special, but whatever, she didn't have to be Rosa's type, just Gina's. "This is my friend, Gina. She's a human person."

"Aaah-awww." Gina laughs in that very condescending way she has. "This is my friend Rosa, she's trying, really she is."

That actually makes the target -- the woman -- laugh, for some reason. She strikes up a conversation, which Rosa tunes out in favor of running a constant scan over the crowd in the bar. Occupancy well under the posted legal limit, no one obviously intoxicated, no weapons or suspicious patterns of behavior.

Wait. Over there. Moving faster than anyone needs to in a bar, against the flow of the crowd, focused wholly in on Rosa --

Rosa doesn't let on that she's seen the approaching woman, but she watches her from the corner of her eye and rests her hand in her jacket pocket where she keeps a small blade that absolutely does not have a name, but if it _did_ it would be La Sombra.

"I love that jacket," the suspect gushes, enthusiasm obviously phony. "Where did you get it?"

Ah. Trying to determine Rosa's patterns of movement? Nice try. "A store."

She laughs a fake laugh. "Oh, and you're funny!" and she goes to touch Rosa's arm, like she's spotted the weapon in her pocket and is trying to prevent her from accessing it.

Rosa starts to step away from her in defense, but suddenly Gina is there, right behind her, in her way, and she only manages to bump into her chest.

"Oh, you met Rosa!" Gina gushes at the weapon-stealing movement-tracking thief-murderer-probably-an-arsonist-while-we're-at-it. "She's so shy. I think it's from her training as a ballerina? You know dancers, they're all so bashful."

Rosa glares at her, because Gina knows that Rosa is not _shy_ , and that is it not appropriate to share her sordid past as a ballerina with strangers, and what the hell, Gina, _you're_ a dancer, are _you_ bashful?

"What are you doing?" she mutters to Gina through tight clenched lips.

"You, a favor," Gina says, mouth equally tight. "She's trying to _hit on you_ , go with it!"

Oh. Well, Rosa can at least shift gears from her 'alert' mode to her 'single on the prowl' mode. Like all of her modes, it doesn't involve much talking -- it lets people project whatever they like onto her, while she gets enough information to determine if they're worth more engagement.

Or, at least, that's the _idea_. That's how her 'on the prowl' mode usually works. But as they circulate through the bar Gina keeps _ruining it_ by offering completely unnecessary pieces of personal information about Rosa.

"Rosa does parkour," Gina tells the woman with the undercut.

"Rosa was a world-class gymnast," Gina raises an eyebrow at the tattooed punk sipping straight vodka.

"Rosa can peel an entire apple -- " Gina starts.

"Seriously, you and Jake need to _get over that_ ," she snaps.

Even with Gina's completely unhelpful interjections, Rosa does well for herself. She could have gotten a couple of numbers, if she was out here for herself.

But she's not. She's here to wingwoman for Gina. So she keeps an eye on her, excuses herself from conversation with a redhead mechanic when she sees Gina by herself.

"Hey," she says, and waits until Gina meets her eyes. "You're doing -- fine. You're fine."

Gina cocks her head to the side. "Am I getting a pep talk from Rosa Diaz? I feel like I should be recording this for posterity."

"Take your phone out and you die."

"Oh, no, I left my phone at home."

"What?" Rosa seriously considers the possibility that Gina is having a stroke, but her speech isn't slurred, the hands around her foot-tall glass show no signs of weakness, and her face, while annoying, isn't drooping. "Why?"

"Yeah, I had a feeling that if I live-tweeted you wingwomaning me you would snap my phone in half? And I am _not_ strong in the face of temptation. So I removed it."

"Smart," Rosa admits, and then clears her throat. "Okay. So. The first girl that I ever." She has to stop again to clear her throat. Gina gets a disturbingly interested look on her face. "Kissed." Gina looks disappointed. "She was a lot like you. So. You can find someone. I -- believe. In you."

"Okay, really? You're stopping there?" Gina demands. "I need _deeeee_ tails. Is it that I look like her, or she had my unshakable presence, or my unfailing sense of timing, or my, whaddya call it, je ne sais quoi, or -- "

"Nope." Rosa throws the rest of her drink back. "Conversation's done."

"But Rosa," Gina cries out as she walks away. "I need details!"

-

By the end of the night, Gina has a handful of phone numbers, and Rosa figures that's the end of it. It's not like Gina needs anymore help. She needed -- whatever, a mentor, which is weird to think of herself being, but not bad weird. She maybe...likes...helping...her friends?

Ugh, emotions are gross.

But the next week Gina comes and rests her elbows on Rosa's desk, right over the autopsy photos of the murder she's working. "So, Rosa, the Pocket, eight o'clock tonight, I already sent you an facebook invite and accepted it on your behalf so don't try to back out of it."

"I don't have a facebook."

"I sent it to the fake account I made for you for when I need a 'friend' to comment on how good I look in photos so I don't look self-centered."

Rosa decides to let that go, _for now_ , and makes a mental note to go intimidate cyber crimes into doing -- something -- to make _that_ stop.

"What happened to Bridget?" she asks, dredging up the name of one of the women Gina had been hanging off of last week.

"Yeah, her Insta is all inspirational memes? Hard pass."

"Okay, what about Dora?"

"Mm, turns out her name is actually Doris. Can you imagine? You'd be making out and you have to say, _oh, Doris --_ "

Hitchcock is watching, too interested, as Gina mimes this imaginary make-out session.

Rosa holds up one of the morgue photos suggestively. The suggestion being, _do you want to end up like this guy, because I could make that happen._

Hitchcock scurries away.

"What about Lindsey?" Rosa asks.

"She freaked out when I told her about Iggy. Like, he _llooooo_ , love me, love my kid, right?" Gina rolls her eyes. "Also she has a whale tail tattoo. Who even _does_ that?"

Rosa squints at her. "Did anyone ever tell you your standards are too high?"

"Aw, Rosa." Gina pats her head, but right on the spot least likely to ruin Rosa's hair, which is considerate. "You don't get to have the third most twitter followers on an entire continent by listening to the haters. I'll see you outside my apartment at 8 o'clock, mm-kay, love you, bye," and she blows a kiss and walks off.

-

Rosa shows up to pick up Gina and, not finding her already waiting outside and not having received any demands for medical supplies, she shoulders her way into the building and walks up the stairs to Gina's floor.

"Heyyyy, there you are," Gina says, opening the door immediately and much more quietly than Rosa had thought her capable of. "I'll be out in a mo? Iggy's just having one of her. Hm, 'Little Fun Screaming Times'."

"You mean a tantrum."

"Uh, can you not apply your pejorative judgmental terms to my beloved spawn's creative output -- oh, thank Beyoncé, you guys are here."

Rosa turns and sees Amy and Jake approaching down the hallway. Jake looks like he's drugged to the gills and also like that wasn't enough drugs.

"Gina," Amy frets loudly and futilely. "This really isn't a good night. Can you please reschedule? Jake has an ear infection -- "

"Can't hear yooooooou." Gina grabs Rosa's arm. "I'm already gooooooone -- "

"Please, we can babysit for you tomorrow! We can babysit on Christmas! We'll babysit on _President's Day,_ that's the sexiest day of the year!"

"Love you, byeeeeee--!"

Rosa waits until they're outside, because she doesn't want to take care of any three of the babies in Gina's apartment: the screaming toddler or the grown man who couldn't fight off a measly little ear infection or the woman who was allergic to the word _no_.

"What do you need me for? You were fine last week."

"Well, yeah, you were there," Gina says dismissively, like it's a given. "I know how to be myself when you're around."

Rosa starts the car and focuses very, very hard on driving to the Pocket.

-

Gina gets another handful of numbers that night, even without Rosa confirming to anyone that she is a person.

Rosa doesn't talk much that night, doesn't get even the possibility of a woman's phone number, even when Gina tells a cute girl with a nose ring that Rosa can do a jump and land in the splits. She's a little distracted by the smoking hot brunette who's buying Gina a drink. The brunette looks familiar -- hadn't Rosa brought her in on a drug bust once? Questioned her in connection with a counterfeit ring? Goddammit, Gina is already two and a half bad decisions away from being a criminal mastermind, this culprit could be the first step that leads to Rosa having to put her in handcuffs.

But Gina must have had a lucky miss, because a week later she comes and slumps over Rosa's shoulders at her desk in the bullpen. "So, our usual?"

Rosa raises an eyebrow. "You, me, tonight, The Pocket, eight o'clock?"

"She learns!" Gina crows.

Across the bullpen, Amy slumps over and bangs her head against her desk.

-

Rosa would have said that Gina was doing fine the last time they went out, but tonight she sees the difference. Gina is doing better on her own, more -- confident, which is weird to think of Gina having a crisis of confidence, but she's having no trouble finding women to talk to now. In fact, when Rosa goes to the bathroom and swears repeatedly at the underpowered hand dryer, she re-emerges to find that Gina has a whole _crowd_ of women around her.

"Gina has been telling us _all_ about you," an attractive butch tells Rosa, and, okay, so Gina was talking her up while she was in the bathroom. Doesn't seem like the best use of her time, not when she could have been talking herself up, but whatever. Gina is committed to reciprocity in this arrangement. That's smart. Going into debt with Rosa Diaz is a _bad_ idea, second only to going into debt with Gina Linetti. So. Yeah. They have a plan. Reciprocity. They each help each other find girlfriends. It's a good plan.

Except weirdly none of Gina's audience hit on her. None of them even try to hold her in polite conversation long enough to stop her from going back to the bar. She hunkers down in the corner, trying to disappear from view. It isn't Gina's fault that reciprocity has failed, so she can at least give Gina room to -- work her magic or whatever.

"Another," Rosa tells the bartender.

The bartender pours her drink, but holds the glass close to her body. "Can I give you some advice?"

"Is advice the new word for whiskey? Because that's what I asked for."

"Uh-huh, look -- I've seen this story play out a thousand times," the bartender says. "So let me skip ahead to the end for you. Your friend is in love with you. If you're going to bring her here again it better be as her girlfriend and not just as the person who scares all the other women off with her scary 'don't touch my girl' vibes, okay?"

Rosa doesn't speak.

Rosa _can't_ speak. Rosa can't only -- look over, at Gina, who's laughing her weird loud little high pitched laugh at something that one of the women is saying, the one that's not quite fake but not quite real: _I am amused but not in the way you were trying to make me be_ , and Rosa wants to go hear whatever funny mean thing it is that Gina has to say, because Gina is cutting and observant and clever and fearless and oh, fuck.

"Oh, fuck," Rosa tells her whiskey.

The bartender pushes the drink over to her. "Cheers."

Rosa gets a few more shots of 'advice' from the bartender of the course of the night, enough that when they leave the bar that night she's able to ask, abrupt, "did you get any numbers?"

"A few." Gina sighs, a genuine expression of dissatisfaction. "I don't know, I guess I'm just hoping for magic, you know? One of those just -- " she slaps the air in front of her. " _Bitch, this is the one for you!_ moments. But I'll give it a try. Maybe one of them can match my text flirt game."

"Yeah. Text flirting. Right." Rosa shoves her hand in her pocket and shuts her phone off before she can text Holt about getting a warrant for Gina's phone records.

-

The next week in the bullpen, Gina descends on Rosa's desk. "U-M-B-T-R?"

Rosa takes a second to remind herself that she doesn't care if Gina is breathing in her ear, and another second to process the thing Gina said as _you, me, bar, tonight, Rosa?_ and then another second to process _that_ into, _let's go to the bar tonight_.

"None of your women matched your text flirt game?" she growls at Gina.

"I thought Mira had," Gina says. "But it turns out that in person she's just a disaster? Like when a lo-res photo finally finishes up loading to high res and you're like, oh damn, that's what I spent all this time waiting for?"

Rosa stares at Gina, blankly. "You dumped her because she wasn't hot enough."

"N-o-o, I dumped her because she was not sufficiently witty to keep up with me in real time," Gina explains. "I'm not shallow."

"You once told a b-and-e suspect, 'yeah I get why you break into people's homes, you needed to steal their clothes, right'?"

"Oh yeah," Gina snort-laughs. "I _did_ do that!"

"Actually," Rosa starts, and then forces herself, awkward and stumbling, through the rest of the words that she's been sitting on for a week or a month or several years. "I thought. This isn't a rite of initiation or any dumb shit like that, but if you _want_ to get into the bisexual lifestyle, we could just hang out and watch movies and complain. You know, just a night in, us and Iggy."

Amy, passing by, turns and behind Gina's back holds her hands clasped up to her chest, mouthing _thank you thank you thank you_ until Gina turns around, and then she pretends to have a stray thread on her shirt. Weak. It's not like Amy would ever leave the house in a shirt with a loose thread on it.

-

When Rosa knocks on Gina's door that night, Gina immediately shoves a screaming, snotty child into Rosa's arms, before she's even opened the door far enough to see Rosa's face.

"Great, look who's here, Iggy, your favorite person, whazzername," and Gina's already turning away from the door.

"Hey," Rosa yells, and again, "hey!" loud enough that Gina turns back and blinks her eyes at her. "Don't you care who you hand your kid off to?"

"Look," Gina says, "the only people who ever come here are cops and Girl Scouts, and the Girl Scouts and I have an _arrangement_ , so." And then Gina turns back around and keeps walking away from Rosa, out of sight.

Rosa holds Iggy a good seventeen inches away from her center of mass. Moves her up and down once, in case that helps.

Iggy looks about as impressed with that move as Gina had the time that Holt tried to say that he liked Destiny's Children.

"Be cool, little person," Rosa mutters.

Iggy curls her lips out, clearly displeased.

"I promise that I'll -- " she digs for the thing she would most have wanted to hear from an adult, when she was a child. "Never stop you from punching anyone?"

Iggy stares at her for another long second, wet, glistening lip threatening to turn into a cry.

Instead, she smiled brightly at Rosa.

Too brightly. Happy babies were _even freakier_ than sad babies. Who knew?

"Ooh," Gina says, swooping into the room with a tone that Rosa doesn't think she's ever heard from her: genuine sympathy. "Someone is ready for bed, huh? Let's get you to bed."

"Really?" Rosa asks. It's only eight o'clock. Surely any child of Gina Linetti's would be up until four a.m.

"Yeah, someone got all excited about her favorite person Rosa coming by," Gina says, looking right at Iggy at not at all at Rosa, who's eyes are wide and scared. "But you've seen Rosa, and I _know_ she's great and gorgeous and wonderful, she's the next best thing to nineteen-ninety-seven Leonardo DiCaprio, so now you have to go to bed." She holds Iggy right up to her face. "Mmkay, Rosa is going to give you a good night kiss -- " Gina glares at Rosa until Rosa manages to flick her lips out into the barest semblance of a pucker. Gina, behind Iggy's head, makes a loud smacking noise and pushes Iggy up against Rosa. "Aaaaw, wasn't that such a great kiss you got from Auntie Rosa? Okay let's go to bed before she kills us, okay, say mmmmmmbaaaaai Auntie Rosa!"

"Baaaaaiiii," Iggy says, voice Doppler effecting down the hall.

'Auntie' Rosa hangs around the living room, but only barely. She really, really. Really wants to leave.

Somehow, she manages to stick around long enough that Gina comes back out, without the baby, and falls onto the couch with a loud 'oof.'

"So," Gina says. "When you said we should watch some movies you weren't talking about porn, were you?"

Rosa scowls at her. "I meant Jennifer's Body."

"Because I'd be down for porn," Gina says.

"I did not mean porn."

"Cause it _sounded_ like you meant porn, but hello, I can find _that_ on my own just fine, and if I were looking for porn recommendations you would _not_ be one my top ten contacts -- "

"Oh my god," Rosa growls. "I did not mean porn, why do I want to make out with you?"

Gina stares at her for long enough that Rosa scans back over what she said. "You whaaaaaaa--?"

"The bartender at the Pocket said that you were in love with me," Rosa blurts out. "And I can't stop thinking about it. And now I want to kiss you all the time and it's so stupid but I can't stop."

"Why would she think I was in love with you?" Gina asks. "I mean, you're gorgeous, obviously," Rosa nods, "and you're the most intimidating badass human of all time to ever live, and you _are_ so technologically barren that it kind of comes back around to being trendy again, and you are, like, _fiercely_ loyal but not in a way where you'd ever do anything annoying like make a big deal out of it, you're just consistently amazing and -- oh, _day_ umn, the bartender was right!"

Rosa's heart thuds painfully in her chest. In the next half a second her life is about to get worse or _so much better._ "So what do we do now?" she asks.

"Well, we don't watch no boring-ass movie, that's for sure," Gina answers, and hauls herself up onto Rosa's lap.

-

"Gina," Captain Holt says, in his 'I have achieved 3.4 percent human emotion instead of my usual 3.2 percent human emotion' voice. "I see that you and Detective Diaz have requested to have the same vacation time. As the odds of this overlapping so perfectly are low, though not negligible, I have to ask if you are taking the time to construct the, and I quote, 'underground Bat-Hyphen-Cave But Sexier Torture Cave' that you've been designing since Iggy was born."

"Nope," Rosa says. "Gina and I are taking a romantic trip to Vermont. No jokes," she warns Jake, who's mouth is already wide open. "It's gonna be dope as hell."

"On the top ten list of comments that I have about the revelation that you and Gina are taking a romantic weekend to Vermont, making fun of the state of Vermont is only numbers three through seven. And ten. And probably nine and eight, but -- ."

"I like maple syrup," Rosa says, definitely, as though that answered all ten of Jake's comments and not merely number seven.

"You know what you can do with maple syrup," Hitchcock starts, and Gina picks up the spray bottle on her desk and spritzes him in the face with it.

"Pour it over hot buttered pancakes?" Scully asks, and Amy pats his arm in a _oh, you_ gesture.

"Since when are you two taking romantic weekends together?" Jake sputters. "I cannot _believe_ I didn't know about this! Gina, you're Facebook relationship still says single!"

"Um, fact check, _detective_ ," Gina says, so snotty and superior that Rosa has to fight like hell not to do something embarrassing like briefly twitch one corner of her mouth up a quarter of a centimeter. "I removed all mentions of my relationship status from my Facebook."

"You mean -- " Terry stops, spoonful of yogurt halfway to his mouth. "You started a relationship and you didn't _tweet about it?_ "

"Nope," Gina says.

"Or Instagram about it?" Terry continues.

"Nada."

"Or Google Plus about it?" Terry asks, tears in his eyes.

"Oh, Terry," Gina says, also with tears in her eyes. "No one Google Pluses."

"Oooh." Terry does something drastic. Terry puts his spoon down on the table and gets up. "Terry loves love," and he throws his arms around Gina and sobs on her shoulder. Gina pats him on the back and reaches with her other hand, slowly, for his butt.

Rosa glares at her.

Gina's hand migrates back up north.

"Seriously! Are we just dropping this?" Jake sputters. "How long has this been going on?"

"Psh," Rosa says. "You're a detective. None of you figured it out?"

"OBVIOUSLY WE DID NOT," Jake yells.

-

_earlier_

-

"Are you _sure_ you want to mess with your friends' lives like this?" the Friday night bartender at the Pocket asks.

"Look," Amy says, voice desperate. "I need them to figure this out so I can have one night to myself. One. Single. Night. _Please._ That's all I'm asking. I love babysitting, but I haven't finished a crossword puzzle in a month." She pats her pockets, desperately, and pulls out a cigarette.

"You know those are going to kill you," the bartender says.

"They can join the freaking club," Amy snaps.

The bartender goes off, eyes wide and freaked out, to solve her babysitting problem, and Amy finally, finally, finds the lighter hidden in the inside pocket of her pant-suit jacket. She puffs her cigarette, going to her happy place: the place where all of her friends are happy and no one wants her to babysit on a weekly basis and everything is alphabetized. Everything...is....alphabetized.

**Author's Note:**

> If you like this fic, you can [reblog it on tumblr](http://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/176388859305/running-in-circles-shinealightonme-brooklyn).


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